Quotes About Inspiration

Nothing, storm or flood, must get in the way of our need for light and ever more and brighter light. The truth is the light and light is the truth.

New York! he said. That's not a place, it's a dream.

Which suggested to me that a novel could be fashioned as a raft of hope, perception and entertainment that might help keep us afloat as we tried to negotiate the snags and whirlpools that mark our nation's vacillating course toward and away from the democratic ideal.

I pour the red liquid over the white mound, watching it glisten and the vapor rising as Louis bends that military instrument into a beam of lyrical sound.

During these times of indecision when all the old answers are proven false, the people look back to the dead to give them a clue, they call first upon one and then upon another of those who have acted in the past.

My emotions locked, as I saw her lipstick lying on the table and grabbed it, saying, Yes, yes, as I bent to write furiously across her belly in drunken inspiration: SYBIL, YOU WERE RAPED BY SANTA CLAUS SURPRISE and paused there; trembling above her, my knees on the bed as she waited with unsteady expectancy. It was purplish metallic shade of lipstick, and as she panted with anticipation the letters stretched and quivered, up hill and down dale, and she was lit up like a luminescent sign.

Man's hope can paint a purple picture, can transform a soaring vulture into a noble eagle or a moaning dove.

Ellison stated that "by a trick of fate (and our racial problems notwithstanding), the human imagination is integrative—and the same is true of the centrifugal force that inspirits the democratic process.

The task ahead of us is never as great as the power behind us.

Our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be.

All my best thoughts were stolen by the ancients.

Some books leave us free and some books make us free.

Even in the mud and scum of things, something always, always sings.

Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can offer with the cumulative force of a whole life's cultivation, but of the adopted talent of another, you have only an extemporaneous, half possession.

Beauty without expression is boring.

I am the lover of uncontained and immortal beauty. In the wilderness, I find something more dear and connate than in streets or villages. In the tranquil landscape, and especially in the distant line of the horizon, man beholds somewhat as beautiful as his own nature.

Don't be pushed by your problems. Be led by your dreams.

Treat a man as he is, and he will remain as he is. Treat a man as he could be, and he will become what he should be.

In the highest civilization, the book is still the highest delight. He who has once known its satisfactions is provided with a resource against calamity.

The Artist always has the masters in his eyes.

Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.

What I need is someone who will make me do what I can.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The secret of education lies in respecting the pupil.